The Shadow Past Is Shaped By Everything

Like Other Ghosts, She Whispers; Not For Me To Join Her, But So That, When I'm Close Enough, She Can Push Me Back Into The World.

When My Parents Were Liberated, Four Years Before I Was Born, They Found That The Ordinary World Outside The Camp Had Been Eradicated. There Was No More Simple Meal, No Thing Was Less Than Extraordinary: A Fork, A Mattress, A Clean Shirt, A Book. Not To Mention Such Things That Can Make One Weep: An Orange, Meat And Vegetables, Hot Water. There Was No Ordinariness To Return To, No Refuge From The Blinding Potency Of Things, An Apple Screaming Its Sweet Juice.

The Shadow Past Is Shaped By Everything That Never Happened. Invisible, It Melts The Present Like Rain Through Karst.

There's A Moment When Love Makes You Believe In Death For The First Time. You Recognize The One Whose Loss, Even Contemplated, You'll Carry Forever, Like A Sleeping Child. All Grief, Anyone's Grief...is The Weight Of A Sleeping Child.

Now We're Like Planets, Holding To Each Other From A Great Distance. [...] Now We're Hundreds Of Miles Apart, Our Short Arms Keep Us Lonely, No One Hears What's In My Head. [...] It's March, Even The Birds Don't Know What To Do With Themselves.